November 15 After Class

I thought more about this during class but it seems as though throughout history rhetoric went in and out of the limelight a lot.  I wonder why it never really has consistently been seen as important or otherwise.

The dialog section of our in class lecture was interesting.  Specifically I found the idea that to the writer the audience is a fiction and to the audience the writer is a fiction really intriguing because I have never thought about written works that way, but it totally makes sense.

November 15

Divisions in the teaching of rhetoric were interesting to me in that it started with one small freshman English course and later also expanded into speech in the US while meanwhile in Europe rhetoric was no more than a secondary level schooling course requirement.

In this reading I found it a little hard to follow when they were describing semantics and semiotics, what they were, what their differences were, and what was the same.  I'm still not clear on what either apply to fully, but partly that could be because both of the two were described in the same section and the words start with the same letter which makes it easy to confuse the two.

November 10 After Class

In class I found our miniature discussion of voice the most interesting in that it is true that voice can be incredibly important in a paper, but is nearly impossible to define.  It is a quality which makes good writing but it is one that is only recognizable by its existence or the fact that it is missing in a paper.

November 10

It is sort of amazing to me that all five of the cannons of rhetoric, delivery, memory, style, arrangement, invention, which were used by ancient rhetoricians still apply in some way today.

One thing that was particularly interesting about this reading was the change in connotation of the word hypocrisy from then to now.  This was additionally interesting because words with change in meaning over time have been appearing throughout this book.

Also interesting was the differences in voice based on oral or written delivery.  Especially when talking about written delivery and the many different ways in which punctuation marks can be used.  It is actually somewhat amazing how completely different a sentence can be based on the usage of lack-there-of of a simple punctuation mark; it may be tiny but it is important!

Of course grammar and visual layout greatly affect rhetoric in the modern era as well.  Both of these are quite self explanatory however.  Visual rhetoric, I think, may be something people think about less, especially when writing a paper, but the layout of a page can easily make something appear more or less cluttered, etc.  Organization is important.

November 8

Following class I had a much better idea of what specific types of memory or memory tools fit into which category of memory; categories being natural, artificial, and external.  Mostly some of what I was questioning was what counted as artificial versus natural being that as a child I learned to tie my shoes, but now I do not have to think about it while tying my shoes, or brushing my teeth, or driving my car, or a number of other things.  Basically it was these ingrained activities which I was unsure about and I also did not fully realize that things like studying are also artificial memory, I was thinking about it as a much more complicated process like the ones of the mental image of the filing cabinet or house described in the book.

The blogpost by a fellow classmate I read today was a very nice, easily read summary of the chapter.

November 8

I found the three types of memory quite interesting.  The artificial memory particular interested me in that I was the least clear on what would count as artificial memory, and was also wondering how they managed to train their memory to be better.  Was the training in any way similar to the memory games and other such activities?

Through reading this chapter I also gained a much better understanding of the concept of filing ideas in one's brain using a system like a house.  We talked about this idea several times in class, but it was just a little more fully explained in the book as to how it works, for example the book mentioned putting something like red rubber rain boots in the house to remind one of to talk about rising seas under the broader topic of global warming; which makes sense as an association.  On the other hand in class it was merely mentioned that items in a room were associated with topics and I remember wondering how one would keep the items straight with the topics; if imagining an existing room it may have upwards of hundreds of items in it already, I was simply not realizing that one would specifically fill the room with items to remind them of their topic rather than using an existing room as it was and attempting to associate random items with topic points.

Memory has also come a long way through time, from depending on only natural memory to depending more on external memory than internal memory.  Even a really long time ago there may have been forms of external memory, but never to the extent as now; it's like comparing cave paintings to a four story library, then multiplying that library by hundreds (at least but probably more like thousands) and then multiplying that by probably millions to account for the internet; and that is without counting doubles of works.

November 3 After Class

During class I was particularly interested in the discussion of style vs. substance.  I found the scale we talked about in class interesting as well.  Particularly what was interesting was that the more substantial a writing was the more plain of a style it would have.  Though I agree that highly ornamental style would distract form the facts from scientific writing I think that at the same time a highly plain style would cause the reader to loose interest.  If the author was merely stating scientific fact without any more interesting stylistic choices no matter their level of interest any reader may find it hard to follow.  So, basically what I am saying that even the most substantial of writing, though requiring a plainer style, style should never be fully plain.

As more often than not, I had trouble finding a classmate's blogpost which I could respond to so instead I would like to respond to the fact that several of the blogs I found not only did not have recent posts based on our reading, some did not even have the essays.  The first blog I found had nothing more recent than the imitatio response posted on it.  So in response to my classmate's blogposts I would like to ask "Why do so few of my classmates bother to post?"

November 3

During this Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students reading I found the ways in which the use of style of the classical era was compared to the use of style today particularly interesting.

Cicero's agreement with the way we learn grammer today, in that he agree that through learning we internalize the rules, stuck out to me somewhat.  I also found the importance put on correctness interesting considering that today we see grammer as rather secondary, at least when editing, teachers tend to tell us to focus on content first and foremost.

Meanwhile both classically and today there is a high emphasis on clarity.  Although, today the emphasis on clarity is for the purpose of effectively communicating one's ideas to their audience while classically clarity was emphasized more on the basis of people being distrustful of rhetoric.

Even today one's writing should be appropriate to match a given situation as well, for example one would not be talking about the benefits of spaying one's pets at a technical conference surrounding the introduction of a new software.

Though figures of speech are less highly emphasized in our learning of rhetoric and writing today than they were in classical times, we still use them regularly in our writing.  Through my educational experience I have noticed many people saying we do not use figures of speech as much, yet I think we just do not notice as readily when we do rather than not using them at all.  Metaphors and especially similes seem to be used on a regular basis in writings in order to properly explain something.  Today tropes, schemes, figures of speech, etc. may not be used as much or as readily as in the past but I still believe I could find examples of such in every one of my writings, and my peers, if I were to look; maybe not in every other word or perhaps not even in any sentence, but I am sure they are there, I just think today we do not pay attention to when we are using them nearly as much as was done in the past.

November 1 After Class

In class I found the idea of treeness and later metaphysics particlarly interesting.  One thing which particularly intrigued me was Plato's idea of starting with treeness, moving on to the tree, and onto experience of trees with no connection leading from experience of tree to treeness in that it is completely different from our ideas today starting with our experience of trees in order to define treeness.  This further interested when a classmate briefly described metaphysics to me, particularly she used the idea of blueness.  How do you define blue?  How do you describe it to someone who has never seen blue before?  I'm not sure it is possible to do either, blue is blue, there is not really a way to describe or define it, if you have seen blue you know what it is, if you have not it is probably impossible to imagine.  Our ideas of treeness may be created by our experience but at least trees are describable while our ideas of blueness are also created by experience but it is impossible to describe without experience with the color itself.

The classmate's blogpost I read was interesting but there wasn't really much I could respond to because it was simply a summary of different parts of the reading rather than their interpretation.  All I can really say is they did a good job with their summary.

November 1

I found the part about the belles lettres fairly interesting in that I found it interesting and of much sense that persuasion should be paired with literature, though I think it need not be limited to poetry.  I also thought that there was a good point that critics "held that literature was purposeful, intended to please and instruct the reader" because even today much of what is written manages to do both.  For example an informative article or essay may be written specifically to instruct but they tend to be written in a way which will keep the audience interested, please them if you will, because otherwise no one would read the piece; not to mention any informative article or essay is usually sought out by someone already interested in the topic. On the other hand things like novels which are written with the primary interest of pleasing the audience also manage to inform in that anytime anyone reads anything they are to some extent subconsciously stretching their brain, improving their vocabulary, and can even be improving their writing.

The elocution movement also stuck out to me in its importance to how we live today.  Partially, at least, thanks to elocution movement we now have a common dialect in individual languages which allows people to understand each other considerably better, if everything were pronounced differently by different people it could be hard to keep track of what they were talking about.  For example if I pronounced knight as 'nahyt' as we commonly now do, but someone else pronounced it as 'kuh-nig-hut ' I may not have any idea what they were saying, context may help for example if they said kuh-nig-hut in shining armor I might get it, but if they pronounced other words differently I may have no idea what a 'kuh-nig-hut een suh-hin-ehng ay-moor' is; note, I came up with alternative pronunciation myself and it may not make any sense but the point is slight differences may make it hard to understand one another if the difference is big enough or there are enough in a row.

Overall I found it interesting how much rhetoric was altered throughout the enlightenment as well.  From two cannons to five, useful to untrustworthy, etc.

The major thing I remember about the John Locke portion of the reading which I found fairly intriguing was the idea that writing is nothing more than an arbitrary expression of ones ideas, it is the idea which is important and the writing is secondary and even, in this context, seems fairly insignificant.

I thought it was pretty interesting that Mary Astell seemed to believe that women should be educated but was not particularly a feminist thinker in that she did not necessarily think they should venture outside their roles at the time.  I thought this was interesting considering that to me it seems as though education would naturally lead to improved conditions for women rather than keeping them in their somewhat limited roles of the time.